


Home(s)

by luninosity



Series: Superhero Polyamory Fluff [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Established Relationship, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Meeting the Parents, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-05-27 04:05:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15016298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: Three of them, three sets of parents to navigate, in different ways.





	1. california

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kellyscams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kellyscams/gifts).



> I don't know where this came from! I blame Kells for this. All the conversations, discussions, feelings about these boys... <3 <3 <3

Clifftop’s medical bay hummed with energy. Floating displays. Busy hands. Vials of blood. Various samples. Devices whirring. Mysterious beeps beeping away. Ryan’s parents bounced around the superhero home base like two small overly excited scientific balloons, and occasionally poked their captive subject with needles. Their subject answered questions, and made miniature thunderstorms clamor in mid-air, and did not seem bothered by the needles.

John nudged Ryan with an elbow. Clear infirmary lights danced over his brown hair and broad shoulders, inches above Ryan’s own. Should’ve been impossible to miss, really, a supersoldier and a lightning-powered gymnast lingering in the doorway. “Think they’ve even noticed we’re here?”

“No."

“Want me to shout at Holly?”

“Yes.”

“I know you’re here!” Holiday, perched on the leftmost observation bed, waved at them with the hand not hooked up to a monitor. His hair was loose, glorious and dark and falling down his back; he was wearing yoga pants, cozy and flexible, and a shirt that’d once been John’s but had magically shrunk to only slightly oversized on those slim shoulders.

Holly claimed this had been their dryer’s fault. That might’ve been true—Holiday Jones, barely twenty years old and the heir to his family’s massive historic estate and master of mystic energies, could be easily defeated by a load of laundry—but might’ve been literal magic; Holly liked feeling wrapped up in his partners.

Those forest-in-springtime eyes sparkled at them now, beckoning. He looked a little pale, though, and Ryan’s pulse sped up. Too many samples of blood sat in a rack over on the analysis table.

Holly added, smiling, “Sorry, sorry, we’re just finishing up—”

“Ryan,” Betty Yamamoto scolded, coming to a momentary rest in front of her son, “we are making up for three years of time here, you could have told us, we _are_ your medical support team!”

“Ma’am,” John said, politely.

“Don’t you dare ma’am me, John Trent. We’re Betty and Ken to you, or Mom and Dad, you know that.” She started to swat John on the shoulder, realized she had a microscope slide in one hand, and mock-scowled up at him instead. Even her upswept black hair only came to somewhere around John’s biceps.

John put on a properly abashed face, and said, “Yes, Betty. We were only wondering how much longer.”

“We mean you’ve had him all morning, Mom, since you _got_ here, and we miss him,” Ryan explained, less politely.

His father’s salt-and-pepper head popped up from behind a microscope. “Which is your own fault, son. If you’d at least given us a hint, three years ago—”

“We know why you wouldn’t, that infiltration plan, sending him back into that nest of vipers, you were keeping him secret, but you love him and we could have _helped_ —”

“Your mother and I could have had at least rudimentary works in progress—”

“—tailored specifically to someone his age, with the ability to redirect energy flow and—”

“—and that work with focus-stones, and speaking of which, the crystalline structure is so—”

Ryan plunged into this stream of scientific enthusiasm before it could become a full-blown river. “If you still want us to come to Mariko’s wedding on Sunday, we need him back now.”

Both Doctors Yamamoto gave their son variations on the patented reproachful parental gaze. His father said, “Son, you know you wouldn’t disappoint your cousin that way.”

“It’s true.” John nudged him again. “You wouldn’t.”

“You’re not helping,” Ryan grumbled. “And I totally would. _You’re_ the nice one.” He wouldn’t—in fact, he’d show up and cheer for Mariko and her soft-spoken graphic designer husband, and he’d dance with every last member of his family, and along the way he’d find time for a chat with his youngest cousin Emily’s new girlfriend, whom he’d not met and needed to evaluate—but he could unfurl the threat at his parents.

“But of course we’re going.” Holiday turned that enormous plaintive gaze on Ryan’s parents, who melted into puddles. “He doesn’t mean it. And I’ve never been to a wedding. I’m looking forward to it.”

Holiday Fortune Lyndsay Jones, ex-Sinister Sorcerer and former supervillain in training, hadn’t previously been on the guest list for anyone’s social events. The universe, swept up in those big hazel eyes, instantly resolved to invite him to every event ever, starting with Ryan’s cousin’s wedding in two days.

Ryan gave in. “Of course we’re going. Dammit, Holly.”

Holly batted those eyelashes at him: innocent and playful.

Ryan raised eyebrows. “We’ll talk about _that_ later, too.”

“What—oh. Really? Oh.” Excitement waved English-accented flags behind the appropriately chastened response. “Yes, Ryan.” The punishment wouldn’t be a real one. Not when it was so much fun for everyone involved. And also fun watching Holiday imagine possibilities and squirm atop the infirmary bed.

“We should have enough to get started,” Ken decided. “I’ll see what Moon Labs has as far as bio-responsive polymers. I want something integrated, armor that can replicate and enhance those structures. Dear—”

“My priority’s field kits and emergency measures, at the moment, I would think.” Betty looked Holiday up and down: surgical expertise and internal medicine versus her husband’s biomechanical engineering enthusiasm. “Deal with the possible mission outcomes before pure research, as much as I’d like to get into some of those implications in more depth…we’ve looked at your ability to create energy tunnels, and those localized weather patterns, and heat, and of course we’ve tested your healing capacity…”

“You’ve what,” Ryan interjected.

“Only minor finger-pricks, one or two simple clean lacerations, an irritant or two.” She finally set down the slide and waved vaguely their direction. “Nothing difficult.”

“Holly,” John said, having taken two long strides across the medical bay and lifted Holly’s chin.

“I’m perfectly fine.” Holly smiled up at him. “No need to fuss.”

Ryan demanded, “You hurt him just so you could test his healing factor?”

“Oh, no, I did it to myself!” Holly held a hand out his direction. Ryan, who would forever come when Holiday Jones asked, went over to take that hand, but was cranky about it. Holly finished, “It seemed the easiest way for them to gather data. And you know I’ve got a fairly high pain tolerance. I hardly noticed.”

“All right,” John said, “maybe we are going to shout at you. You could’ve at least told us, kid. We’ve just been in the training room. Nothing important. We’d’ve wanted to be here.”

“Oh,” Holly said. “I didn’t think—yes. I should have told you. I’m sorry.”

Ryan exhaled. Reached over to stroke a loose bit of hair out of Holly’s face, where it threatened to tumble into that right eye. Let the hand linger.

They’d need to talk about that one. Holiday _had_ been doing better, with time and love and the occasional anonymous chat with the therapist Captain Justice had recommended. The tendency toward martyrdom, not merely standard heroic self-sacrifice but actual worrying disregard of self and pain, remained. Holly’d been very thoroughly conditioned as a tool in his parents’ villainous plots, and also tried to make up for those plots by giving every bit of himself, regardless of cost, when asked.

Of course, Holly also liked being told what to do. Being good. Giving himself over to his partners, in the bedroom, and letting weight lift in submission: profoundly safe and free.

It was, Ryan decided, complicated. He ran the hand through Holly’s hair again. Holly settled into the caress.

The faint flare of annoyance and alarm retreated, bittersweet as comprehension. Holly was fine, not hurt, obviously completely healed, aware of his own limits, here with them. They’d talk about it, and he wished they didn’t need to, but then again Holiday wouldn’t be Holiday without that sharp-fanged past and, equally, that sweet and generous heart.

So they’d talk about it, and they’d all be okay. He found himself smiling; he leaned down as Holly looked up, and they kissed softly and sincerely under medical-bay lights, while John’s hand cradled Holly’s face, directing, guiding. They tugged John into the kiss too, for that.

Ryan’s parents, leaning against various medical engineering technology, made suspiciously happy cooing sounds.

John pulled away, ears going red. “Sorry, Betty—Ken—”

“You adorable boy.” Betty looked as if she wanted to pat him again, but couldn’t reach. “How’s the neural enhancer working in your suit? Illusions lasting longer?”

“Um,” John said. “Yes.” They’d been developing a prototype to utilize more of his minor telepathic projection skills alongside the expected supersoldier strength, boosting range and clarity. “Thanks.”

“Next time we’ll look into better poison gas filtration,” Ken offered. “Ryan told us about that one.”

“Ryan,” John sighed. “You know I got accelerated healing with that super-serum…”

The chorus of, “Accelerated doesn’t mean instant!” rang out from every single person in the room. A monitor chirped one more time for emphasis.

“Not you too,” John said to Holly. “Traitor.”

Holly gave him a flawlessly sassy head-tilt. All that hair scampered and rippled, luxurious blue-black under cool lights. “I care about your well-being. I _love_ you. Both of you.”

“Guess I can’t argue with that.” John dropped a kiss on the top of his head this time. “Same for you, though. No getting hurt without us. No agreeing to anything that causes you harm without checking in.”

“He’s been watching _My Gay Teen Superhero Life_ with Melissa again,” Ryan said. “I know because I walked in on them in the middle of a video call about Alex’s latest break-up. I feel like that’s some sort of emotional harm.”

Melissa Bridges had leapt headlong into the Lightning Kid vacancy after Ryan had quit being Captain Justice’s sidekick. Seventeen, skinny and confident, the daughter of two prominent African-American activist lawyers, she’d taken one look at Holly, who’d never gotten to be young in _any_ sense, and scooped him up under a protective electric arm.

Ryan had mixed feelings about this, mostly centered around the sudden necessity of increased social contact with his former mentor. Melissa was willing to record and post internet videos of Tim singing in the shower or snoring in the jet after a mission, though, so he’d begrudgingly accepted the situation.

Besides, she made Holly laugh. Anything’d be worth it, for that.

Even the teenage superhero melodramas. Maybe. Probably. Almost certainly.

“She wants to take me shopping for new clothes,” Holly said. “She said she has some ideas. For me. That you’d appreciate, she said.”

John narrowed eyes, no doubt recalling some of Melissa’s more dramatic fashion choices. “Do I need to call Tim? Has she been sharing brain-space with the ghost of an ancient Roman witch and brothel-keeper again?”

“No,” Ryan said. “And that was only once, and that amulet’s locked away. Let’s just…let’s see where this goes. We could, y’know, end up appreciating it.” He was pretty sure Melissa’d worn clinging red leather pants a few weeks previously. He was considering Holly’s long legs and cascading dark hair and that scarlet leather.

His mother said, to Holly, “Oh, you’re caught up on the latest episode, then? Patrick is awful and Alex is better off without him!”

“I’ve been hoping he’ll manage to redeem himself,” Holly said, a bit wistfully. “It’s very Shakespearean, isn’t it? The romantic comedy elements. The mistaken identities. The twins dressing up as each other at the dance. That cliffhanger ending’s so unfair, though. The wait’ll be utterly agonizing.”

“See?” Ryan pointed a finger at him. “Emotional harm!”

“Speaking of harm,” his father put in, and everyone swung that way, hearts in throats in at least two cases. John’s hand, holding Holly’s, got visibly tighter.

“Oh, nothing like that.” Ken blinked at them, neat and tidy and framed by notes and test-tubes. “There’s something interesting about your reactions to foreign bodies, though. Do you ever get sick? Even minor illnesses?”

This question was directed at Holly, who looked surprised and then thoughtful. “Do you know, I don’t think I ever do end up with colds or any of that? I’ve not thought about it, but I can’t recall ever having even the sniffles. Might it be some sort of subconscious reaction?”

“Automatic redirection of resources,” Betty said. “Natural immune response. I’d love to explore the implications of that—but of course the main goal at the moment is to protect you from danger in the field…”

“You’re not invulnerable,” Ken mused, regarding a glowing blue scan full of mysterious data. “You can be injured. So our priorities should be defense and then faster repair.”

“Fine,” Ryan said. “You can keep working on it. Dad, do you want us to pop you back home now, and then we’ll come over in a few hours and spend the night so we can help with wedding set-up, or—”

“Do you think,” Ken said, “if we focused on that ability to reconstruct—”

“If we could accelerate the replication of—”

“We’d have to tailor the bio-markers to—”

“But we could do that fairly easily with the—”

Ryan yelled, “Parents!”

His father at least had the good sense to look guilty. “Sorry, son.”

His mother patted Holly’s shoulder. “We’re sorry, Holiday.”

“I don’t mind.” Holly regarded the shoulder-patting as if it’d bestowed a knighthood: an honor, and an unanticipated one. “I’m finding all this fascinating. Mother and Father were always more interested in what the power could do, not any scientific basis for it. I’m curious.”

“Yes,” John said, “but there’s a limit, and that limit is multiple gallons of your blood.”

“But I can heal, and if it’s in a good cause—”

“Holiday,” John said this time, and the edge of command made Holly go silent, eyes wide and cheeks pink.

The pinkness reassured Ryan’s heart. Holly _had_ been too pale, earlier.

To Holly, he said, “We’re not mad at you. Mom and Dad, though, maybe. For stealing you.”

“It’s only been…” His mother winced. “Three hours.”

“Exactly!”

“So,” John said, “we’re stealing him back. And feeding him. And packing for the weekend. And if you want him again, ma’am, ask us first.”

“I really don’t mind,” Holly said again, but meekly, less a protest than a registration of position. “I’d love to know what you learn.”

“We should,” his father suggested, “arrange a time, not now of course, but soon, to watch you interact with weather patterns on a larger scale, to observe how you sense and control the—”

“What if,” Ryan said, “we told you we were kidnapping him for _sex_?” Maybe this would work.

“Then we’d be thrilled that you have such a healthy and fulfilling sex life.” His mother beamed at him. “Assuming Holiday likes being consensually kidnapped by you, of course. No, I can see that you do, no need to answer that. If you would ever like any advice, about lubrication or aftercare or techniques—or there’s that shop your father’s ex-boyfriend introduced us to, with the wonderful range of toys that—”

_“Mom!”_

John actually had a hand over his face. “Ma’am…Betty…thanks, but we’re doing fine…”

“As long as you’re happy,” Ryan’s mother approved.

“Ask us anything,” Ryan’s father agreed. “Any time. You know, Holiday, we could come up with some special oils specifically designed for—”

“No no no _stop talking_ ,” Ryan said.

“Tell me later?” Holly stage-whispered that direction. Ryan made a mental note about his parents, Holiday Jones, and relaxation into familiarity. He should’ve introduced them ages ago.

“Yes indeed.” Ken nodded at him. “You and I and your mother—oh, sorry, do you mind? We think of John as our son already, and of course that includes you now—”

“Now that we know you exist, and also, you know, we are going to _one_ wedding this weekend, we’re just saying—”

“Oh my god,” Ryan said to no one in particular. “I’m sorry, Holly. I’m sorry, John. I’m sorry, universe. Parents, _no_.”

“In any case,” his father finished, “Holiday, we’ll do that later. When our son isn’t around. He’s so easily embarrassed.”

“So cute.” His mother was unhooking Holly from the final monitor. “Remind me to show you the baby pictures. He cried so much. Never wanted anyone else to hold him. Very suspicious baby.”

John had started laughing hard enough to have to sit down next to Holly on the bed. “Hasn’t changed much, has he…”

“There are baby pictures?” Holly became delighted by this revelation. “Yes, please. I’d love to see them. And—and yes. I’ve never had—I like that idea. Being your family. If you’re sure.”

“If you bring out the Halloween pictures, I will definitely shoot you all, or possibly your photo albums, with lightning bolts,” Ryan announced. Idle threat. His parents, offhandedly referring to Holly as family, had made those shy hazel eyes light up.

“Oh, come on,” John said. “No need for lightning bolts. Not when your baby photos are already so precious. That Halloween mouse costume’s definitely memorable, too. Unique. Even…I could say…striking.”

Ryan leveled a finger at him. “Our hypothetical future non-existent wedding is _off_. No chocolate cake for you.”

“As one of your two hypothetical future grooms,” John said, “I didn’t know we were even thinking about cake flavors. I’ve been left out of this planning process. I feel insulted. Holiday, are we insulted?”

Ryan, watching Holly’s expression, saw the precise second at which the words sunk in. Teasing, yes; unserious, yes; but if it ever became real, it wouldn’t be John and Ryan plus a grateful half-redeemed Holiday Jones, happy just to be present.

It’d be all three of them. The planning, the decisions, the suits, the vows. Standing up there together.

Holly’s eyes were shining. The brightness didn’t quite overflow, but close. “I—I like chocolate. And tea. Could there be an Earl Grey cake layer? If so we could—I think we could possibly forgive him.”

“Still speaking _hypothetically_ —” Ryan glared at his parents; put the glare away for his partners. “—yeah. We could find a baker who could do that.” He could find a baker who could do that as a surprise next week, in cupcake form, even.

His parents, ignoring the glare, vibrated with anticipation.

“Anyway,” he went on. “Parents, go away now. We need to pack and take care of Holly. The stealth jet can drop you anywhere, just leave it on autopilot, and we’ll follow you and be there in time for dinner, okay?”

“You don’t have to deal with the jet.” Holly raised a hand. “I can open a gateway for you. I’ve seen your house in some of Ryan’s pictures.”

Ryan hadn’t been going to ask. John beat him to the next and related question, which was, “You feeling up to that, kid? After all the tests and needles and healing.”

“I’m not tired. And that’s not hard. And it’ll be faster than the jet.” Holly left fingers poised for permission. “I mean, if you’d like. If you’d…trust me to send you somewhere.”

Ryan’s parents exchanged glances. Ken said, in the same tone he’d once used to encourage his son to explore newfound abilities without fear, “Of course you can. We trust you.”

Holly smiled back. Straightened those slim shoulders a bit more. Ryan and John exchanged glances too.

Those eloquent sorcerer’s fingertips sketched a small swift circle in the air. The circle coruscated and grew. Billowed outward in jade and sunlight streaks. Revealed a gleaming clear oval of San Francisco, a few hours away from Clifftop’s island rocks by any normal means of travel. Showed off the outside of the townhouse Ryan knew so well, tall and blue and white and neatly trimmed with flowers above a sloping street. On the inside, full of family meals and blueprints for artificial limb integration, his own framed MBA diploma from UC Berkeley and his mother’s comic book collection. Home, because it would never not be, even though he’d moved into Clifftop with John years ago.

“Thai for dinner?” His mother scooped up her tablet, ensuring she’d sent relevant data over. “Delivery, because Mariko says she needs help finishing those seed packets for the wedding favors, so we have some work to do tonight. But we found a new place we really like, Ken, what was it—”

“Rainbow Thai.”

“—Rainbow Thai, and the owners are such nice young men, such a sweet couple, and their coconut curry is very very good, and we’ll get that tonight so you can try it. And extra orders for John, of course.” Hugging happened. Ryan tried to imperceptibly coax his parents toward the twirling portal. No tiring Holly out.

“We’ll see you in a few hours,” John promised. “We’ll be prepared to tackle wedding favors. Just point us that direction.”

“We’ll take shameless advantage of your endurance,” Betty promised, and waved, and they stepped through spinning radiant light into a San Francisco afternoon.

Ryan let out a breath. Plopped himself onto the bed next to Holly. The medical bay equipment hummed in sympathy. “So. You’ve met my parents.”

“I think I love them.” Holly reached over to take his hand. “They’re so…”

“Noisy? Overpowering? Too much? Best in small doses?”

John, sitting on Holly’s other side, kicked him.

“I can see them as your parents, is what I mean.” Holly’s fingers curled around his. “I don’t know whether that makes sense. I didn’t know what to expect—I wouldn’t’ve guessed—but they feel right. Kind.”

“That’s a new one. Most people run the opposite direction.”

“That’s not true,” John said. “They’re both brilliant. Other doctors come from all over the place to work with them. Don’t listen to him, Holly, he’s just annoyed about the baby pictures. That’s totally happening tonight.”

“And they only learned about me three days ago, and now I’m invited to the wedding, and they want to design armor for me.” Holly, both hands being held; couldn’t bat intrepid hair out of his own face; Ryan did it for him. “They’re wonderful.”

“They’ll order enough Thai food to feed an army,” Ryan said. “And that’s _after_ accounting for John. I’m just saying.”

“They love you, and you love them.” Holly’s eyes were grave and warm and rueful: recognizing an emotion he might finally be allowed to share. “Can I ask a question?”

“Always, yeah, you know that.”

“Your father is…” Holiday hesitated over terminology, unwilling to make assumptions. Something purred in the background: an analysis finishing, sending results to Betty’s computer in the townhouse’s lab.

“Very bisexual? Yeah. And thoroughly, public displays of affectionately, married to my mom, but if you encourage him at all, he’ll tell you stories about _all_ his exes. So many stories. Which I don’t need to be in the room for, because that’s my dad, thanks.”

“It’s nice,” Holly said. “Having that. Acceptance. In general, I mean, not only about who we love. Though that too. With specially designed oils. But they don’t care who I’ve been. Or they do, it’s not something to ignore entirely, but…”

“But they also care who you are now,” John said. “Who you’re trying to be. And yeah, about the acceptance. I know it’s kind of a shock. In a good way, though. When you haven’t exactly had that. I’ve been there too.”

“But you were never anything other than good! You were always a hero—” Holly gazed at him, confused.

“You’ll get why whenever you’ll meet my parents. Sometime.”

“Oh.” Holly stopped. They all knew that John, though he’d never not love the parents in question, didn’t spend much time visiting; Ryan, who’d been to that dry and fragile truce of a house, understood why. Holiday, picking up those undercurrents, hadn’t asked until now. “Are they…they don’t like our powers? What we are? Or you being…with Ryan?”

“All of the above,” John sighed, and tipped his head to rest atop Holly’s. “Don’t worry about it now, kid, that’s not any time soon and I’ll try to come up with a way to explain you to them slowly first. How about we feed you something with lots of iron and then lots of sugar, and then we take you off to the bedroom for a couple hours and see about those consequences from earlier, before we’re on wedding-favor assembly duty?”

“Yes, please.” Holly looped a foot around John’s ankle. “I would like consequences. I would like your hands on me, both of you. I know you worry about me. I really am sorry, and I’m also entirely unhurt, so please do whatever you both decide is fair, with me. I’ll love it all. And…”

“And,” Ryan said, hand sliding along Holly’s leg, up that slender thigh, liking the way Holly shifted into the touch. John grinned, and one of those large supersoldier hands snuck over onto Ryan’s hip in turn.

“And, about the wedding.” Holly offered that smile again, drawing them irresistibly into orbit. “I said I’ve never been to one. I haven’t. I haven’t a clue what to wear. I can conjure up anything, but I’ll need you to tell me.”’

John said, “I like that idea.”

Ryan, about ninety-nine percent sure Holly’d known as much and mentioned it on purpose to distract John from less pleasant _other_ family memories, and in complete support of this purpose, said, “So do I. Telling you what to wear, what we want on you…or even _in_ you, underneath everything…”

Holly’s eyes became enormous hazel saucers. “Yes, _please_.”

“Sounds like we have a lot to do before tonight, then,” Ryan told him, told them both. “We should get started.”


	2. england

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parents, part two: Holiday, and a portrait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanting to get this up before I leave for Australia! <3

Ryan and John gazed at the portrait. The portrait gazed back, tall and grand and imposing in painted silence. Holly, between them, said nothing, and said it with a small tired smile: facing his parents.

Ryan couldn’t excavate words. None big enough. Orders of magnitude.

Holly’s parents, in lush extravagant color, loomed over the gallery and the forest of other painted figures. Arachne Jones had chosen to wear red, the deep heart’s-blood red of a mortal wound; Horatius Jones wore black, tall and sharp and relentless. They contemplated the entire historic house and the cool stone floor and the extent of their domain with idle arrogance; they had not chosen to be painted with their offspring.

Holiday would’ve been two years old, then. Ryan could see the date on the discreet copper plate.

“They look,” John said diplomatically, “like they belong here.”

“They do, rather.” Holly tucked both hands into pockets, casual and wry. He’d only put on two of the mystic rings of power that morning; a few weeks ago he’d turned one of the focus-stones into a hair-pin, and it perched above his left ear, an incongruous purple butterfly amid dark seas. “I still think of this as their house, you know. Not mine. Not properly.”

“It is, though.” Ryan shifted weight closer. Sharing space. Offering himself, as best he could. “Yours. All of this.”

He meant it as comfort. Holly could do anything with this pile of antique stone and memories, could turn everything into a museum or a heap of rubble or a mouse, given those sorcerous powers. The offering didn’t land right; Holly glanced at him, surprised. John said, “You’re already doing something good with it. Opening it up, letting people in, garden tours, living history, all that.”

“Oh, I know.” Holly’s smile wrapped them both up in light, gathering everybody into the love; Ryan ended up breathless. “It’s not as if it’s a terrible sacrifice on my part, though, so don’t make me sound too selfless. I never thought of it as home even when it _was_ home. I never knew what home could mean, until you.”

He might’ve said this with bitterness. He didn’t, because Holiday Jones was—behind the supervillain training and the legacy of those raptor-eyed portraits—the kindest person Ryan knew. Made of that big sweet heart and eagerness to please. Currently beaming at both his partners, happy at the thought of home, and fiddling with a loose thread on a trouser-pocket.

“We’ll take you back home after this.” John looked up at Holly’s parents again. “And we’ll take care of you. Repeatedly. Maybe using those leather cuffs you like. But, Holly…” He paused. Hunted for phrasing.

“He means thank you,” Ryan said. That was true; he knew John’s faces, those expressions, that tangle of gratitude and protectiveness. “For letting us meet your parents.”

“Oh, well.” Holly gave him a small shrug, a head-tip, a sideways grin that could’ve brought armies to their knees. Holiday Jones in another universe would’ve been a model, an actor, a muse for countless artists: lovely in a way that’d shatter admiring hearts. Framed by portrait-gallery winter sunshine, smiling and contented, that loveliness became warmer and more real. “I’ve met yours. One set, at least. It seemed only fair. And this’s as close as we can get. And I wanted to. Since I’d never brought you here. Until now.”

 _Here_ meant Holly’s family house. That hulking edifice of English heritage. The Jones money and the Lyndsay estate. The towering history and the weight of accumulated years of wealth, the thick accretions of power both magical and aristocratic.

The house extended opulent wings in multiple directions; the grounds sloped off into the distance and contained disused stables and an extravagant garage and a nineteenth-century hermitage. Holly paid the wages of the historical preservation society staff and groundskeepers who organized tours and maintenance. The master suite and private library remained off-limits to anyone not privy to a Sinister Sorcerer’s power.

“You sort of look like them,” Ryan said. “And sort of not.” Maybe this would redeem his earlier comment.

“Do you think so?” Holly considered his mother and father, that glittering ominous pair who’d once terrorized cities and tried to bring down the Moon. “I’ve been told that before—Mother used to like that I was so clearly _hers_ —and I used to like that as well. But I don’t know. These days I’d almost rather not. But you said not. Sort of.”

“The hair. Your nose.” Ryan leaned over, kissed the nose in question, got a laugh. “But you smile. They don’t look like they know how.”

“They did,” Holly said. “Sometimes. When some plan succeeded. When I’d pleased them. When they’d acquired a new artifact.”

Holiday Jones had his father’s eyes, lush dark lashes and large pretty color. But the green of Horatius Jones’ gaze crackled as vicious as poison; in Holly that emerald hue’d been tempered by gentle hints of brown like fawn’s fur, like new earth, like places for flowers to grow. He had his mother’s proud cheekbones and elegant grace, and the thick tumbling hair of both parents, and their straight-backed patrician slimness.

He’d inherited their vast sorcerous talents and mystic amulets, of course.

John said quietly, “Thank you.” He was looking at the portrait, not at Holly. “Thank you to you too, kid, obviously, for inviting us. For letting us in. But Mr and Mrs Jones…sir, ma’am…whatever else you did, you gave us Holly. And he’s a good person. He’s a hero. And we love him.”

Holly raised an eyebrow at him for that. “They can’t hear you. Well, almost certainly. I’d not put it past my parents to’ve evaded death in favor of retreat to some mystical private fortress. But as far as I know they’re no longer on this plane of reality.”

“I know,” John said. “Don’t be a brat about it, kid, or I’ll spank you later.”

Holly’s eyes danced. “Promise?”

“You know we will,” Ryan said. “Um. Same from me, then. I mean, you guys did try to conquer the world, and you were kind of horrible as parents—using your own kid as a power source, what even—so I’m only going to say this once, but thanks. For Holly.” Arachne and Horatius Jones gazed loftily into the distance, and did not reply.

“You two,” Holly said, amused. “You’re not actually meeting my parents. And anyway you fought against them. More than once, even.”

“So did you,” John said. “At the end.”

“I didn’t.” Holly bit a lip, worried at it, left toothmarks: suddenly seventeen again, on a battlefield, bleeding out from a gut-wound. “I left them to die. That was all I did. I ran, and I left them.”

“You stopped helping them.” True, and if Holly didn’t know how important that was— “You made a choice. And you almost died. We saw you.”

“And then you found me. The two of you brought me home.” Holly gave him that smile again. The universe quivered with excitement. “And you tell me you want to tie me up and spank me. In front of my parents, even. Such a dreadful influence. And you’re meant to be the heroes.”

Ryan gazed at him and that smile, under the weight of family and loss and memories of blood and power. Thought: sometimes I’d swear you’re the oldest of us. Even though you’re not. In some ways, though. In some ways.

This impression of quiet heroism was not countered by Holly’s evident delight at the mention of sex and love and homecoming plans. Strengthened, instead, as Holly glanced up at his parents, shrugged again, a little, and leaned over enough to bump an elbow into John’s arm. “Should we be going? I’ve told the staff we’ll be out of the way before the afternoon. They’ve got an avalanche of impending schoolchildren who’ll be learning about life below stairs.”

Ryan said, “Do you miss them?”

Holly blinked, startled. The flow of words hesitated mid-stream. His eyes said more: a kind of affectionate appreciation that Ryan’d asked, that someone understood. “Yes. No. Sometimes. I don’t know.”

John and Ryan both nodded, encompassing complications and comprehensions, at this.

Silence landed companionably. Together, they stood in the big sunlit space among rows of antique ancestors. A bar of light fell across Ryan’s right shoe.

“They were cruel.” Holly looked up at his parents. “They were selfish. But they had a vision, and they trained me to follow that vision. Everything they did to me and for me, they thought they were doing in order to make me stronger.” His voice brushed paint and canvas like a feather, like a ribbon on a long-lost letter, like a faded pencil-sketch of a childhood that hadn’t been one. “I know the world hates them. But the world hates me as well.”

“It does not,” Ryan and John protested in concert. Not these days, anyway. Not _most_ of the world. Not the ones who remembered that Holly’d been a kid and essentially indoctrinated into evil, and who saw everything Holiday Jones currently did to try to rescue and help and rebuild. To keep trying.

Some people couldn’t forgive the youngest Sinister Sorcerer for his part in any of those atrocities. Holly said he understood. Ryan had very nearly flung lightning at the man who’d shouted from secure ground—after being saved from an earthquake, no less—that Holiday should die in the aforementioned quake.

Holly’d put a hand on his arm. John had put a hand on his _other_ arm. The lightning’d subsided.

“It’s complicated,” Holly said now, returning to Ryan’s question. His hair had begun freeing itself from today’s loose knot, escaping from confines. In soft slacks and his night-blue oversized cardigan, he might’ve been a very young professor or a genius graduate student, beautiful and academic. “They weren’t…good people. But I’d not be who I am without them.”

Watching him, Ryan felt the glimpse of that unrealized future like a broken pearl, brittle and luminous and poignant. Holiday Jones surrounded by ivy-clad walls and scholarly spires at some storied centuries-old university, an Oxford or a Cambridge. Holiday buried in books, smiling at a handwritten Elizabethan sonnet. Holly as a professor’s teaching assistant, the one everyone hoped to get, generous and enthusiastic, unselfconsciously lovely and consequently the subject of hundreds of collegiate daydreams. Holly declaiming Shakespearean monologues to wide-eyed undergraduates, all flushed cheeks and eloquent passion, rolled-up sleeves and hands sweeping the air into battlefields and romances.

He asked, an impulse, “Would you ever want to go back to school?”

Both of Holly’s eyebrows shot upward. “I _exploded_ my old boarding school. I shouldn’t think I’d be allowed within a thousand meters of _any_ educational institution.”

“You had good reasons.” John put an arm around him: a bulwark against invisible birch-rod and starvation scars. “If we’d been there we’d’ve helped with the exploding.”

“We can afford whatever your tuition could possibly ever amount to.” Ryan reached over to take Holly’s hand, under the critical gaze of painted parental eyes. “And there’s, like, online courses. Or independent study options. We could look into it.”

Holly squeezed his hand and leaned into John’s bulk. “What’s prompted this sudden concern for my intellectual fulfillment?”

Ryan, uncomfortable, shrugged.

“We’re always concerned about your _fulfillment_ , kid,” John rumbled, emphasis halfway between an exaggerated leer and genuine honesty. “Nothing sudden about it.”

“If you honestly want to have sex in my family’s ancestral mausoleum,” Holly said, “I’d suggest the main library. I’ve got the best memories in there. Ryan…” His hair’d come completely undone now, other than the winking amethyst sparkle that hinted at magic. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t ever think about it. I will. Think about it. That’s a different life, though. At the moment I’m thinking about our life. Together.”

“I love you,” Ryan said. “We love you.”

“I love you both. I’m also thinking about sex in the library.”

“Do you want that?” Ryan put a hand out, stroked back a flyaway bit of Holly’s hair, felt silken strands like midnight water flow through his fingers. “You need us to make you feel good, right now?”

“We could put you on your knees.” John slid a big supersoldier hand to the back of Holly’s neck; they all enjoyed the shiver of response. “Or bend you over one of those old chairs or writing desks. Right there in front of all your books, and I could hold you down, and we can make you take it, whatever we want to do with you. We can make you feel everything, kid, everything you need, everything that feels good.”

“Oh,” Holly said, almost a gasp; Ryan leaned in closer and pinned him between their bodies. Holly whispered, “Yes, please.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Ryan agreed. It did. Holiday spread out across an antique surface, trembling and laid bare, the curves of that delicious ass growing pink from spanking…John’s strength keeping him in place, while Holly moaned and squirmed and grew desperate, cock wet and dripping the way it always was when they played with him, growing slick and messy and leaking evidence of need all over historic heavy furniture…

Holly’s knees wobbled slightly. John’s hand had tightened on his neck.

“Want me to carry you back to your library?” Supersoldier arms could in fact carry both of them, Ryan knew; John enjoyed getting to use the strength to make them happy, and wanted to. “Or do you think you can walk, kid?”

“Ah…we’re not walking.” Holly waved a somewhat distracted hand, attention diverted by caresses. Abrupt new sparks crackled and pinwheeled into a portal; jade and gold streamers flared and spun and became an opening in reality. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and an eighteenth-century carpet peered at them from a monument to generations of bibliophilic gathering, several rooms away. “Walking takes far too long.”

“Because you have, like, acres of house.” Ryan touched his cheek this time: the arch of a cheekbone, the curl of that smile, at the corner of Holly’s lips. “Think we can make you come for us in every room? Starting with your library.” The best memories, Holly’d said.

“I’m not opposed to you trying.” Holly looked at him, at John, and smiled more. “I do know what you meant, before. It’s my house now. My legacy. Whatever we do with it. Right now I’d quite like you to do _me_ in it. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“I think,” John said, “we can handle that,” and his eyes were beckoning and warm, and his kiss was beckoning and warm too, all of them drawn into those large arms, as Holly’s magic leapt and played and promised a gateway to the next moment, not blocking out the parental portrait entirely but twirling beside it, framing them all with riotous light.


	3. arizona

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's parents are the least comfortable. But that doesn't mean there can't be comfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning of sorts: John's parents are absolutely Those White People Of A Certain Generation Who Live In Arizona. (I say this as, yes, a white person. *sigh* but albeit married to someone decidedly not-white, and we have had those conversations, and questions about Hypothetical Future Offspring and all the weight there...) They're trying, they really are (sort of), and they were good parents in terms of raising their son and they love John (not ever in question), but there's a fair amount of uncomfortableness as far as lack of understanding/tolerance, so if that's problematic to read, you may want to skip this chapter!

“They’re going to hate me,” Holly breathed. “I shouldn’t come. You and Ryan should go and enjoy your father’s birthday weekend—”

“Holiday,” John interrupted, deep and firm, and took Holly’s face in both big hands, fingers framing desperate self-castigation. “I want you there.”

Around them, Clifftop’s kitchen nodded in granite encouragement. Sunshine popped in through a window to glint off Holly’s teakettle. They’d spent the day before tracking down an army of mischievous-but-not-evil robots-gone-wrong in Seattle; they’d been laughing, then, watching John hold two wriggling mechanical puppies up in one hand and attempt to lecture them into good behavior.

They’d come home to more laughter, and to each other.

Home, in one very specific way, was precisely the current problem.

Ryan stepped in too. He wasn’t as good as John at outright comfort, and these weren’t his parents, but he figured he could contribute, having been here before. “Look, John’s parents barely even put up with me. It’s not going to be about you. Not more than it’d be for anybody.”

That wasn’t entirely true, though it might be true enough to help. Pete and Sylvia Trent would have never disowned their only son—their pride and joy, the man who’d followed his father and grandfather into the Army and done well enough to be recruited into a secret supersoldier program, becoming a hero and a household name—for being gay. But they hadn’t precisely taken it well.

John had recounted that story for Ryan and—later—again for Holly, half laughing, half shaking his head: he’d met Robbie Rivers during basic training, and they’d been inseparable instantly, a perfect set of golden hair and brown, blue eyes and grey, matching terrible puns and bad joke competitions and a love of building projects in spare hours, all broad shoulders and mutual determination to save the world even before the successful acquisition of superpowers.

John had brought Robbie home for Christmas, that first year. His parents had regarded this development with sheer bafflement, and to this day—after the grief, after everything— threw in mentions of nice girls down the street or recently hired to work with John’s mother at the local library.

Ryan had, over the years, swung from flippant amusement to jealous annoyance to weary tolerance of this state of affairs. John was his—now theirs—and they were John’s; John’s parents would never jeopardize that. The Trents meant well, and as family went they could be worse.

Maybe not _much_ worse. But worse.

“I’m not _you_.” Holly’s voice wavered: storms over antique castles. Ruins in the forest. “I’m not—if _you’re_ not Robbie, I’m even _more_ not—you know what I’ve been, what I’ve done—”

“It’s still not about that,” John said, and actually picked Holly up and went out to the main room and sat down with him on the couch. Unheeded, the vestiges of Holiday’s magic—they’d been planning to pop over into Tucson via mystic instant portal, until Holly’d panicked and let them see exactly how off-balance he felt—shimmered and dwindled. Wind ruffled ocean waves outside, beyond Clifftop’s hideout walls. The afternoon, falling into evening, cradled them in shades of blue and gold and oncoming indigo. “It’s about me. Dad only got along with Robbie because they had the Army in common, that was pretty much all, and both Dad _and_ Mom are still holding out hope that I just need to meet the right girl. I keep pointing out that I’ve met the right guys—more than once—but so far that hasn’t, y’know, worked.”

“Come on,” Ryan said, settling in on the other side and scooping up Holly’s hands, “you have to listen to that, seriously, Pete and Sylvia only ever even tolerated Robbie, and _everyone_ liked Robbie. So it’s not gonna be about you.”

Holly managed a shaky smile. Tipped his head to rest on John’s shoulder. Fingers cold, but being held. “Everyone did like him, didn’t they? I wish I’d known him. Even Mother once called him irritatingly competent, which considering the source was practically a vow to adopt him.”

John actually snorted with laughter. “He’d’ve loved it. Thanks for that.”

Robbie Rivers—once upon a time code-named Mercury, and everyone’d known them, everyone had loved them, Mercury and Sundown, tall and kind and strong and brave—had died preventing a nuclear explosion from destroying the world. John had simply gone on: not knowing what else to do, drifting through the motions, hollowed out, he’d tried to explain. Everything blank and flat. Saving people because Robbie would’ve wanted him to. Feeling no elation, no satisfaction, no quiet pride in a rescue or a triumph. Feeling nothing at all.

Until Ryan had run into the middle of an ice-gun robbery, crackling with electric power and frustration at the stories that kept calling him Captain Justice’s former sidekick. You knocked a gun out of someone’s hand with a lightning-bolt and grinned at me, John had said, and I felt like you’d hit me with it instead. White-hot. Waking up.

John Trent would never not love Robbie Rivers. Ryan and Holiday, who loved and were loved by John today, did not mind sharing. Holly, Ryan understood, regarded this love with a kind of startled awe at having any share in it at all, even three years in and counting. Ryan himself, secure in the present, could be magnanimous toward the memory.

“If I remember any other backhanded compliments from my parents I’ll let you know,” Holly said, wobbly but rallying. “I’m certain there were more. The two of you did keep foiling their plans.”

“It’s that irritating competence,” John said. “We were always good at that. Both the competence and the irritating. No one ever appreciates the puns.”

“You,” Ryan said, “once took down Doctor Invisible, and looked him right in the eye after you got the power-lock cuffs on, and then you said, and I quote, I just can’t see you getting out of this one, Dave.”

“You wish you’d thought of it.”

“I really, really don’t.”

“ _I_ like it,” Holly put in. “I can…see the humor.”

“Oh my god,” Ryan said, “why are there two of you?” and picked up Holly’s chilly fingers and kissed them. “Look, it’ll be one weekend, Pete’ll glare at us because I’m not a tall white-guy military man with seriously excessive muscles—”

“Hey.”

“Sorry. Love you. Love your muscles.”

“Thanks.”

“—and Sylvia’ll look sad because I’m not an adorable wholesome girl next door, but neither are you, kid, so at least we’re in this together.” Ryan, as Sundown’s _public_ partner, had met John’s parents infrequently over the last three years. Holiday, for complicated reasons having to do with that supervillain past and use of that past in his recent infiltration of the Masters of Terror, hadn’t. “Just another mission. We can handle that.”

“My parents aren’t _that_ fearsome,” John said.

Ryan held up a hand, tilted it back and forth: yes and no.

“At this point I’ve lost track of whether you’re helping,” Holly said. “But we might as well go through with it, right? I mean…I’ve got to meet them sometime, haven’t I?”

“It doesn’t have to be now if you aren’t ready,” John said. “But you already know how I feel. Not if you say not, but I’d like it. Now that we can, now that you’re here with us. Not undercover.” Now that you’re home and safe, said his eyes. “I _want_ to introduce you to everyone. To stand by your side. Our Holiday.”

Holly sighed. “As long as you promise I can be under the covers with you both later. Should I open the gateway again?”

“If either one of you makes a joke about beds and throw pillows,” Ryan said, “I’m leaving you both to face Pete and Sylvia by yourselves. Holly, if you’re offering, then yes.” He’d take the offer as it was meant; Holiday might be eager to please and genuinely profoundly submissive in bed, but wouldn’t lie to them, and—at least at this point—wouldn’t’ve asked about the gateway without wanting to follow through.

“What sort of joke would we even come up with, regarding throw pillows?” Holly flicked fingers at the air; the air obligingly leapt into whirling lapidary motion, green and gold energy coiling into a portal. The deep emerald ring on his left hand was mostly a focus-aid; he’d only gotten better at guiding the sparks of the universe.

At seventeen, when John and Ryan had met him, he’d been capable of bringing down buildings and conjuring fire. Three years later, Ryan considered, watching the understated deftness of that gesture, Holiday Jones might be more powerful than anyone yet understood.

And had an equally extraordinary capacity to make _anything_ into a sex joke. Which somehow became even more naughty in that plush lord-of-the-manor accent. “Something about firmness, perhaps? How nice and well-stuffed they can be?”

“They’re called throw pillows,” John said, “because I can throw you into a heap of them. And then have sex with you. Speaking of being well-stuffed.”

“That’s not even a good joke,” Ryan argued despairingly, and grabbed Holly’s hands, getting up and tugging their youngest partner along. “You’re both hopeless. John, got that scotch?”

“Right here.” John scooped the gift off the table and waved it at him. “We’re prepared. Mission-ready. Stop fussing.”

“See,” Ryan said, “even _you_ admit it’s a mission,” and held both their hands, and stepped through flickering magic into Arizona heat.

They landed neatly on the front path, between arid desert-bloom landscaping and the smooth Southwestern curves of the Trent family home. The place was nowhere near the size of Holiday’s cavernous legacy, and a sharp contrast to the slim and colorful Yamamoto townhouse in San Francisco; it looked like what it was, the comfortable suburban space of two aging people long settled in and solidly contented with their lives. Holly’s eyes were very wide, taking in cacti and rock gardens and billowing blue sky and dry wild beauty.

“Yeah,” Ryan murmured his direction, “not exactly English countryside, is it? Or even my parents’ place.”

“No,” Holly said, “but it’s lovely, isn’t it? The rocks, the colors, the lines. It’s so different…and I like being warm.” He’d tipped his face up to the fading sun; his hair slid merrily out of its tie and fell down his back. He tried to stop it, laughed, and gathered silky black waterfalls back up, bathed in sunset.

Ryan glanced at John. No surprise there: John was watching Holly too. They both did, for a blossoming handful of seconds. Couldn’t help it.

Eventually Holly coaxed the hair into submission in the form of a messy knot, and then paused. “What?”

“Nothing,” Ryan said. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Please never cut your hair,” John said.

“I’d not been planning on it. Though I suppose I’d not _not_ been planning on it, either.” Holly looped an escape-artist strand around one finger and regarded it pensively. “It does rather get in the way. But I like the way it looks.”

“Yes,” John said. “Yes yes yes. Keep thinking that. And thanks, about the landscaping. Dad and I did most of it, a while ago. Robbie helped some, later. The telekinesis was great for that.”

“I expect it would be.” Holly might’ve said that a different way; the only emotion evident, though, was pleasure that John had those good memories. Ryan, still holding John’s hand, squeezed slightly. John squeezed back, and said, “Come meet my parents.”

The landscaping and the sunset had made them optimistic. Thirty seconds later, the evening leapt headfirst into catastrophe, and kept on running.

John’s mother had always reminded Ryan of a small plump bird, a neat brown and grey sparrow or wren, soft and pretty in a faded way; she’d technically retired years ago but couldn’t give up the library, and had returned to work part-time. She cared deeply about her son and her community; if that care hadn’t frequently taken the form of casual exclusionary remarks and mild unwillingness to look beyond conformity, Ryan might’ve even liked her. He waited for her to finish hugging John—she barely came up to his chest—and offered a conciliatory, “Sylvia.”

“Oh…hello, dear.” She even gamely smiled. “So good of you to come and keep Johnny company.” As if she still hoped he and John were roommates, teammates, work partners. The automatic welcome warred with deliberate ignorance in that welcome, before she turned back to the familiarity of her own son. “Your father requested my meatloaf for his birthday dinner, so that’s what we’re having, just as soon as it’s done. And tomorrow we’ll do the big family party with everyone, and that’ll be so nice, having you all over. For tonight, we’ve got both beds made up in the guest room, so you can sort that out as you’d like.”

“Mom,” John said patiently, balancing their overnight bag and wrapped bottle of scotch, “we did tell you all three of us were coming. And you know we live together.”

“Oh, sweetheart, do you have to…you know your father doesn’t like to think about that.” She peeked around John at Holly. In the background the television played the sounds of football; Pete hadn’t bothered getting up. “Oh…he’s…well, he’s not as tall as I’d’ve expected…oh, dear, I didn’t mean to insult you! Please don’t—oh—I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

Everyone, including the cacti, cringed with secondhand embarrassment. Sylvia seemed to be attempting to hide from a Sinister Sorcerer’s wrath at being called shorter than expected, as if Holly might banish her to another dimension on the spot. John’s ears had gone pink and mortified.

Holly, on the other hand, very obviously put on his _talking to people who need reassurance_ smile, the one that cost him something underneath, and widened those big _I swear I don’t do that anymore_ eyes and tried to emanate harmlessness. In comfortable slacks and that violet cardigan, he almost managed it. If not for the world’s memories of apocalypse and flame, he would have. “It’s absolutely fine, Mrs Trent. I’m never as tall as anyone expects. And John and Ryan have been so good about helping me with the power and control. They’re brilliant role models.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said uncertainly.

“Role models,” Ryan said. “Seriously, Holly? You and John were having an argument about whether you can duplicate bananas with magic, last week. And, for the record, just because you can—and _yes_ , John, they taste _exactly the same_ —that doesn’t mean you should. We have like a hundred bananas now.”

“They do _not_ taste the same,” John protested.

“Yes they do,” Holly objected. “And if you’re using them for banana bread, why does it matter if they’re magical replications, as long as they’re indistinguishable—”

“We should’ve brought you bananas,” Ryan said to Sylvia. “Sorry.”

“I don’t know how your father feels about magical fruit…” She eyed Holly with the wariness of someone anticipating a diabolical avalanche of conjured produce. “But we’re keeping you standing in the doorway. Come in. Please.”

They came. John ducked down the hallway to drop their bag—mostly for show; Holly could summon over anything they needed—onto one of the beds they’d push together later. Ryan and Holly trailed Sylvia through rounded architectural archways and out into the living room, where Pete Trent, steel-moustached and Army-fit but visibly aging and halfway through a beer, glanced up and nodded through the football. “Ryan.”

“Hey, Pete.”

Sylvia got out iced tea and checked on the oven and went off to involve herself with potatoes.

“So,” Pete said. “How about that last game, huh? You keeping up with this season?”

“Not really,” Ryan said, which was better than _not ever_ , and proceeded to let Pete lecture him about stats and starting line-ups and poor coaching decisions that should’ve been made differently. Exposure to John and John’s family had at least given him a working knowledge of the vocabulary; Holiday, being aristocratically English and mystical and literary, stayed quiet and mystified.

Pete noticed him eventually. “Who’s this, then?”

“Dad,” John said, reappearing, “I told you I was bringing someone new. Or not new exactly. We’ve loved him for years. Also, hey, happy birthday.”

Pete actually got up to hug his son, albeit in a very gruff and definite way. No excess emotion. The exact appropriate manly amount. But they had the same square jaw, and the same clarity of purpose, and if John hadn’t been supersoldier-sized, the same broad-shouldered frame. “Thanks, Johnny. You want a beer? More in the fridge.”

“Sure.” John handed over the scotch. “And here. From us.”

“Oh, nice choice. Twenty-five year, too.” Pete grinned. “You know, your uncle Rick would love this. We should get together more. Go out shooting, maybe. Like old times. Course, you’re probably too good for us old men. Big superhero and all. Tele-whatsis. Your mental thing. Illusions.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” John said, grinning back. “I’d make it fair. Totally wouldn’t make Uncle Rick walk into a river. Not unless you asked me to, I mean.”

“Well, we’ll see. We can talk about it tomorrow.” Pete eyeballed Ryan and Holly, who both fidgeted a little. Couldn’t help it. That gaze. Military-precise, under the good-old-boy demeanor. “So. Ryan. How’s your family?”

“Good.” Ryan suppressed the urge to tack on the sarcastic _sir_. “They’re doing fine. My cousin just got married, and we helped out with the wedding, the set-up and favors and everything.”

“Good, good.” Pete waved this off, attention back on the game. “And—did you see that? Tell me you saw that foul! That was obvious!”

“Oh, totally,” Ryan said. “Obvious.” John stepped on his foot.

Holly looked at both of them. Then at Pete. Ryan could’ve told him that saying nothing was likely the best course of action; Pete knew who he was, because John had told both parents well in advance and carefully, face to face for a quick lunch visit. The lack of interaction wouldn’t be an accident.

He ducked out briefly to grab beer. Came back and distributed them. One for everyone, including Pete, who would’ve given him a pointed look if Ryan’d argued that the last one wasn’t empty yet. Holly, whose experience with alcohol was extensive—handling drunkenness had been part of that rigid curriculum—but who hadn’t spent much time in the presence of cheap American light beer, sipped his with the expression of someone being very meek and polite about it indeed. John eventually laughed and took it away from him.

Ryan noticed Pete’s expression at that, too.

Family knickknacks, china plates and carved figurines and framed family photos, watched them from the shelves around the fireplace. Cool white walls and desert-tan tile kept the Arizona heat at bay, though John’s parents liked the house warmer in general than Ryan was used to. Meatloaf and potatoes made their presences known.

The conversation turned into silence, clumsy and freighted, broken by sports.

Sylvia eventually, mercifully, popped out to summon them all toward food and the old-fashioned hearty dining table. Ryan felt temporarily hopeful about this. Food brought people together. Everyone liked food. That could be successful.

He figured out suddenly that Holiday Jones had never confronted classic American meatloaf, either, and paused mid-step. But then again Holly’d grown up able to handle anything from literal starvation to force-fed decadence to dishes involving snails. Ryan decided he’d be fine.

And they almost were. For a minute. Five. Fifteen.

John and his father traded family reminiscences. Sylvia wanted to hear about Ryan’s cousin’s wedding, which everyone seized on as a more or less safe topic, despite the occasional pauses over comments like, “was it very _exotic_ , then? Not like an _American_ wedding?” Ryan sighed internally, showed her pictures of Mariko’s dress and dazzling orchid-and-crystal table decorations, and let her coo over his cousin Danny’s two-year-old daughter in her flower-petal outfit. John looked happy at this sign of getting along.

Holly stayed quiet, slim and bashful in pale violet with rolled-up sleeves, and smiled a lot, and nibbled meatloaf. He’d acquired wine, as had Sylvia, instead of beer.

Sylvia paused at a picture of the three of them, as taken by Danny, who’d offered. Laughing, dressed up, caught under glimmering fairy lights on a sparkling hotel lawn. Ryan and Holly tucked under John’s arms, Holly’s hair in fantastic end-of-the-party disarray, Ryan leaning up to bite John’s ear: all of them beaming, flushed from dancing and giddiness and the night, in love.

“Oh, yeah,” John said, looking over. “That was fun. Also, I know you told us, Holly, but wow, I mean, you can just about out-drink _me_. Are you _sure_ that wasn’t magic?”

“Training.” Holly’s eyes danced at the photo, at the memory. “I promise I wasn’t cheating. Though I _can_ heal any of the effects if I can focus enough. But no, that was only me. And quite a lot of practice at being functional. But you can go on thinking I’m magical if you’d like.”

John, plainly not expecting even mild teasing, burst out laughing. “Always do, kid. Always do.”

Bread made its way around. Small talk managed to scrape its way into existence. Pete watched Holly from the head of the table, evaluative, speculative. Holly inched a bit closer to Ryan.

“So what is it you like to eat, dear? Since you’re not from here, and all.” Sylvia handed over potatoes; Holly took some. Ryan remembered to breathe. Possibly she was placating a Sinister Sorcerer who might blow the Trent family home into orbit on a whim, but possibly, just possibly, that question held actual interest.

It _had_ to. Holiday Jones was likable and needed mothering, and Sylvia Trent was a mother to her bones.

She went on, “Anything in particular you might enjoy, that we could do to make you happy? We never know what to cook for Ryan, of course, goodness, I wouldn’t try, everything your people—” This meant Ryan, and by extension every person of Japanese descent on the planet. “—eat is so complicated, dear.”

Holly opened his mouth. Ryan, who absolutely _knew_ the words on those lips were going to be a confused _your people? But Ryan’s in fact FROM America, unlike me,_ kicked him in the ankle. Tried to surreptitiously discover telepathy and shout, _let it go, let it go, it’s not worth it, let it go._

“Um,” Holly managed. “Nothing terribly special…we had a French chef, growing up, because Mother liked that…but then when they sent me off to school it was, well. Not that. Designed to make us stronger. Not memorable, really.”

Liar, Ryan thought, but with affection: a futile angry kind of affection, anger not directed at his youngest partner but at the school where starvation, and battles over bread in contests of strength, had been common. Not memorable, hell.

“Ooh, French.” Sylvia passed along green beans and onions. “Fancy, isn’t it?”

“Fancy,” Pete said.

“But you’re English, aren’t you? So isn’t that funny!” Fortunately she wasn’t expecting a reply, and barreled on. “Of course there’s an Irish pub that just opened downtown, isn’t that right, Pete?”

“A pub,” Pete said.

“So maybe we could take you all there sometime!”

“I—” Holly did some hasty rearranging of reactions, visible to his partners but hopefully not anyone else. “Yes. Of course. That would be lovely.”

“Oh, aren’t you charming.” She offered bread next. “Such nice manners. Not what we’d’ve expected, under the—knowing what you’ve—oh, dear, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” Holly said quickly. “I know what you meant, Mrs Trent. It’s fine, truly.”

Sylvia took refuge in a sip of wine. Obviously casting about for common ground, emerged with, “So do you help out with the cooking, then? If you miss your home?”

John snickered. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever seen him try to scramble an egg.”

Holly found a smile. “You distracted me! Both of you. So technically that was your fault.”

“At least you know how to use the teakettle,” Ryan said.

“I know how to do the _important_ things.”

“Eggs are important things!”

Sylvia was watching this byplay with bewildered incredulity, as if the image of her son enthusiastically bantering with both partners, unselfconsciously waving a fork at the last surviving Sinister Sorcerer to make a point about breakfast foods, had been beamed into her dining room directly from outer space.

“I can follow instructions,” Holly defended himself. “And you both like giving them. So you ought to be pleased about that.”

“Don’t think we’re not, kid, we’re just wondering how you’d survive in the wilderness—”

“Magic!”

“If you can follow instructions,” Sylvia offered, gamely attempting to contribute, “then you can certainly learn to cook, isn’t that right, Johnny? And Johnny loves food, and I’ve always said that a good home needs good food in it.”

“Mom,” John said, “you know I actually _like_ cooking, right? I like doing that for us.”

 “Of course, dear.” She leaned over to pat his hand. “And of course you can’t expect someone like Ryan, who’s not even _from_ here—”

“I’m from San Francisco,” Ryan said.

“—to know how to make your uncle’s meatball lasagna. And we wouldn’t expect that of someone who’s not quite human, either.”

“Holly’s _completely_ human,” John said, beating out Ryan’s “ _What the f—”_ by a millisecond and talking over him. “What the hell does that mean, Mom?”

“Oh, dear, language…no offense, of course.” She even smiled. Holly had gone utterly white. “But you’re not, are you? That funny power, those abilities…we know Johnny’s were all scientific, not that we understand the science, of course, but we know it was. And we trusted the Army command with him. But you’re something else, aren’t you, dear?”

“I…don’t know,” Holly got out. “I don’t—Mother used to say we were special, superior, even, but—I’ve tried not to think that way…”

“The kid’s human,” Pete threw in. Everyone swiveled toward this unexpected contribution. “Powers and all, sure, but vulnerable, right? He can get hurt like you and me.”

“We try not to get hurt,” Ryan said. “We try not to let _anyone_ get hurt.”

“If—if you have a family recipe for—was it meatballs?” Holly said, trying hard, “I could…possibly attempt to learn? If you’ve got detailed directions?”

“You don’t have to learn to cook,” John said. “Mom—”

“So,” Pete said. “You don’t cook, you didn’t even go to college like this one here—” This came with a jab of a knife at Ryan. “And you’re good at blowing things up. What is it that you do, exactly, when you’re not getting Johnny to wait on you?”

“I—” Holly faltered, leaned even closer to Ryan. Foundations trembling. Ivy-twined castle walls undermined. “I don’t…I suppose I don’t do much, really…”

“You’ve saved our lives four times and counting.” Ryan curled fingers around his fork. Fought down sizzling lightning. No melting the family tableware. Not even with that look on Holly’s face. “You sabotaged at least six plots by the Masters of Terror. You look up awesome historical trivia and tell us about the last duel fought in France and make it into the best story ever. You draw pictures for little kids to keep them happy when we can’t find their parents. You make John smile. You make us laugh.”

“So you don’t have a job,” Pete summed up, unimpressed.

“Holly’s turned the Lyndsay estate into a heritage site,” John put in, searching for a life-preserver. “Open to the public, tours, charity events, kids’ history and literacy programs. It’s doing a lot of good work.”

“Huh.” Pete consumed a bite of meatloaf, processing this. “So you spend a lot of time over there? Running the business?”

“Oh…” Holly glanced at John, and back at John’s father. “I don’t spend much time there day to day…of course I’m present for Foundation meetings and I approve every project…but no, I’ve always thought it was better off run by experts, and I’ve been so busy otherwise…”

This time John’s father only grunted.

Holly bit a lip. “I suppose I could find more time to visit in person?”

Not with those memories. Not with those brutal ghosts. No. Ryan said it aloud: “No.”

Holly’s foot tapped his in gratitude.

“Guess kids who run around blowing up cities don’t learn much in the way of real life,” Pete observed, and drank more beer.

“ _Dad_ ,” John snapped.

“No,” Holly said, very small, and nudged a bit of potato around on his plate, not looking up. “It’s fair.”

“At least you know it.” Pete finished off the beer. “You got handed those powers, all that money, and you know what you did with it? And the rest of us have to clean up after you.”

Ryan’s fork got hotter. “Holly nearly died trying to save a little kid. The night we met him. He got _shot_ doing that.”

“And why was he there in the first place?” John’s father snorted. “I remember that day, son. All three Sinister Sorcerers, looking like the end of the world. Don’t tell me different. I joined the Army to help stand up against villains like you.”

“I’m sorry,” Holly whispered.

“You ought to be.”

“I think,” Sylvia said brightly, “that we could use blueberry pie, don’t you? Boys, it’s in the kitchen, would you like to go and bring that in?”

“Oh, I could just call it in here if—” Holly stopped. Sylvia’s eyes had gotten very big at this casual mention of supernatural prowess and the summoning of dessert. “Oh. I’m so sorry. I’d never do anything to— Never mind.”

Ryan grabbed the closest forlorn hand. “We’ll find it.”

Out in the white-walled kitchen, he got both hands on Holly’s shoulders. Shook them gently. “Come on. Come on, look at me, it’s okay, you’re okay.”

“I knew they’d hate me—” Holly took a deep shuddering breath, then another. Fought for control. “I didn’t know—I didn’t think it’d be so—”

“I know. They’re fucking horrible. Come here, it’s fine, I’ve got you.” Arms around Holly. Catching all that shaking, as the tears won out. Ryan held him next to the countertops and sink, and rubbed his back, and wanted to fling fire at the world. Holiday Jones had a past. Who didn’t?

He breathed, knowing his own impulse was to shout and throw lightning into an innocent cupboard and punch a hole into John’s mother’s blueberry pie on its rack, “We shouldn’t’ve made you come, I know, you were right, I’m sorry.”

Holly tucked his face into Ryan’s neck. Dampness slid along Ryan’s skin. He ran a hand over that extravagant fall of hair, setting it free from its confining knot. Attempted, “This’s worse than usual. Normally they’re just, like, average everyday awful. Not _extra_ awful.”

“So it is me.” Holly stayed put in his arms, though some of the crying had faded: forced back by an exercise of that well-honed implacability. Holiday Jones had once been trained to let nothing interfere with his family’s glorious purpose; he gathered up that training and leaned on it now. Ryan, who’d seen Holly rediscover laughter and desire and love of mint-chip ice cream and bright pink fuzzy socks, gritted teeth but kept emotion inside. Not important right this second.

Holly went on, “They’re talking about us. Me.”

“You can hear that?”

“So can you. It’s not quiet.” Holly tipped that head up, listening. Ryan listened too. Eavesdropping. Tactless. Couldn’t help it.

“—what the _hell_ ,” John was saying, low and hurt and furious. “I love you, but I love them, too, and you don’t get to talk to my partners like that!”

“Oh, Johnny.” Ryan couldn’t see Sylvia through the kitchen cabinets and dining room wall, but could picture her: round and ruffled and distressed, hand on John’s arm. “We’re worried, that’s all. You know your father and I love you. And we’ve tried to understand, we’ve tried so hard—even when you’ve made some choices we didn’t agree with—but, Johnny, this boy…”

“He’s a criminal,” Pete rumbled. “And a kid—he’s half your age, and you can’t tell me that’s right—but besides that, he should be in jail. Paying for what he’s done.”

“Holiday Jones is a better person than any of us.” John’s voice stayed level with heroic effort. “The way he was raised—what people did to him—wasn’t his fault. And he’s more than made up for it. And he’s twenty, Dad, he’s not a kid, and he’s been through hell and fought his way back. And I love him.”

Ryan hugged Holly more tightly. “See?”

“This life of yours…” Sylvia’s headshake was audible. “Why couldn’t you ever take the easy path? Find a nice girl, fall in love…we were so proud of you, when you became a hero…but this, Johnny, these boys you keep bringing home…they’re just not what we ever pictured for you.”

“I know what you pictured,” John said. “And maybe it would’ve been easier. But that’s not me. I’m sorry, but that’s not _ever_ going to be me. I’m in love with Ryan. I’m in love with Holiday. That’s who I am. And if you’re having a hard time with that, I get it, it’s _not_ easy, but don’t take it out on them.”

“At least if you found someone that we, that you, had more in common with,” his mother said. “We could try to understand. Someone like Robbie—”

Silence swung in like a stab-wound. Ryan, holding onto Holly, couldn’t breathe. He could not imagine John’s face, at that moment.

John said, finally, “There’s no one else like Robbie.” And his voice cracked over the name.

A teardrop hovered on one of Holly’s long eyelashes. It slid off and left a trail of noiseless crystal grief over one pale cheek. Ryan touched it, caught water on a thumbtip, couldn’t swipe heartbreak away. He said, quietly, “I’m going to go get John. Stay here. We’re leaving.” Holly nodded.

Before he’d quite made it out there, John added, “And no one needs to be. That was—I was someone else, too. Back then. This is now. And there are people I love now. And they love me. And I’m going to go kiss them, Mom.”

A scrape of wood against floor suggested someone’d moved, or bumped into a chair, or stumbled over feelings. John appeared in the doorway, shoulders filling up the space, eyes darker grey with emotion, short hair ruffled as if he’d run fingers through it in exasperation. His eyes went to Ryan and Holly and Ryan’s arms holding on and those tell-tale tear-tracks.

Ryan said, “John—”

“Don’t,” John said, “just—just come here, okay?” and suddenly was surrounding both of them, all muscles and fierce burning love and need. He was big enough to tuck them both into one embrace; he felt warm and strong and shaky, and Ryan slid an arm around his waist and kept him close. Holly’s hair poured itself onto John’s shoulder.

A star or two twinkled through the window, out in deep blue Arizona night sky. Horizons beckoned; they could leave. They could go anywhere together.

Including their bed. Or their heroically sized sofa. Where they could cuddle up and keep their supersoldier surrounded by care. Love and tangled limbs and kisses, no demands, only closeness. Healing balm over old scars and new torn-open places. Some of those home-improvement shows John liked, and Holly asking sweetly interested questions about woodworking tools, and Ryan’s hand kneading that spot behind John’s left shoulder that tended to collect tension.

His hand wanted to get started.

“Holiday.” John lifted Holly’s chin, cradled his face, searched those wide eyes. “Are you okay? That was—you _know_ I love you. You know we love you. You belong with us.”

“I know,” Holly whispered back. “I know.”

“Okay.” John kissed him once, brief but hot, promising more; turned to kiss Ryan too, a statement of lips and commitment and hearts. “What do you want to do?”

“Leave,” Ryan said. He still had the arm around John; he tightened that grip. “You don’t have to stay here. None of us do.”

John nodded. In a knot of support, they moved toward the living room, the entryway, the front door. Holly could’ve opened a portal right on the spot; one last flicker of consideration kept Ryan from asking for that. Nothing even more shocking or disruptive. No sorcery in the living room. Nothing that’d make the situation even worse for John.

Outside, though. In that front yard.

He put a hand on the doorknob.

John’s mother said, softly, “It’s your father’s birthday…”

They swung back around. Pete and Sylvia had trailed them into the living room, and hovered awkwardly, embarrassedly, unsure.

“I know,” John said. “Happy birthday. And I love you. I do. But…”

“We didn’t mean…” She lost words, wrung hands. Ryan had never seen anyone do that in real life.

He realized, looking at them, how much older John’s parents in fact were. Another generation. Shapes raised in the past. Lines on those faces. Cobweb-silver in that hair. Not an excuse, but a context; he wouldn’t forgive them for hurting the men he loved, but he thought he understood a little more.

Holiday was also looking at John’s parents. Ryan couldn’t tell what thoughts might be happening behind those eyes. Pain? Regret? Memories of Holly’s own family, so cruel and twisted and powerful—and now permanently gone, no chance of any reconciliation?

Holly said, hushed as sunrise, “You should stay.”

“What? Why?” John tapped Holly’s mouth with one large index finger. “No.”

Holly kissed the finger. “No, I mean it. He’s—he’s your father. Whatever else…that’s important. You shouldn’t lose that.”

“Yes you can,” Ryan said. “It’s completely okay to walk out.”

“It is,” Holly said. “We could. I’m not saying it’s not one option. And I’d support that if you said so, you know I would. We will. It’s only…I heard your mother, in there. Listening in. Sorry. But. She loves you. They do love you. And they’re trying. Maybe it’s not working, but maybe…if you all want to try…”

Pete, Ryan noticed, was watching John and Holly. Eying the easy affection, the tenderness, the devotion in gestures and gazes.

Perhaps thinking, given the name that’d floated uneasily in the night moments ago, of another year, a different John. A boy they’d raised and loved, who’d gone distant and unreachable in the wake of loss. Monosyllables and mission readiness. Far away.

Not far away now. Right here. Comforting someone. In love.

“I don’t know.” John brushed the fingertip over Holly’s cheek this time: checking in, adoring, cementing presence. “I don’t know if I even want to stay. You’re hurt and Ryan’s angry and _I’m_ angry and I want to make sure you’re both fine.”

You’re hurt, too, Ryan thought. You’re hurt and you’re scared that we’re hurt and you hate the idea that your family hurt us. And you can’t fix that with super-strength or telepathic illusions, and you don’t know what to do, and you need us.

He said, “We’re fine.” They would be. “Whatever you want to do. Holly and I can go and you can stay and have pie and we’ll pop back in to get you in an hour, if that’s what you decide. Or you can leave with us right now.”

John glanced back toward his parents: toward celebratory dessert and a gift of scotch and ghosts of the past. Football and afternoons spent learning how to shoot with various uncles. High-school trophies and weekend barbecues and growing up with unquestioned security and love.

John’s hair held just a few flecks of grey too, smoky against the brown. Ryan noticed those strands in a way he normally didn’t, then. And something about that glimpse pierced his heart, poignant and aching as broken-open treasure-chests, spilling gold.

Holiday Jones glanced over at Pete and Sylvia also. Straightened those shoulders. Faced John’s parents head-on, a weary slender young man with an ocean of black hair and rolled-up sweater-sleeves and too many specters behind big eyes. He said, quietly, “We’ll leave, or at least I will, and I’m very sorry. I know I don’t deserve your hospitality. But I do want to say something first.”

No one interrupted, whether out of surprise or dread or confusion. Ryan nearly intervened, but thought that this must be important. It had to be. Holly wouldn’t speak up otherwise, not now.

Holly pushed up a sliding sweater-sleeve. “John’s a good person. He and Ryan are the best people I’ve ever known. They saved me. They didn’t even know me, and they saved me, back when we first met, because they thought that was important. I know I can’t make up for the things I’ve done—I know I didn’t deserve that either, what they did for me, and I don’t think I ever will—but I’m here and trying because of them.”

“Holly,” Ryan breathed. John’s next inhale caught, not quite a sob.

“That’s the kind of person your son is,” Holly went on, not precisely ignoring them. “Someone who saves people. Who believes in people. And he loves us. He’s chosen us. So—so there has to be something good in that. If he can love us. And if—maybe you should try to trust that. If you trust him. And even if you don’t understand him, even if it’s not what you wanted, you love him. I know you do. I can tell.”

Sylvia opened her mouth, closed it, shifted weight. Her gaze fell.

Ryan said, “Holly, you _can’t_ say you don’t deserve—”

Holly said, still to John’s parents, “John’s a hero. He’s saved the world. He saved a little girl’s cat yesterday. In between fighting tiny obnoxious robots. He makes terrible jokes about apples and he builds bookshelves for fun. That’s the person he is. He’s someone who loves people. So please—I know it’s not my place to say anything and you shouldn’t listen to someone like me anyway—but please just…just love him.”

This time John, voice cracking, said Holly’s name. Pete said nothing.

“I know what it’s like,” Holly said. “When people have a—an image of what they want you to be, and they love that image, or they love what they can use it for, and so you try to be—and it hurts. I don’t have any family left. Other than John and Ryan, I mean. But, Mr and Mrs Trent, you do. You have John. And the person he is…he’s wonderful. That’s…um, that’s it, I think. What I wanted to say. I’ll…I think I ought to leave now.”

“ _Holiday_ ,” Ryan said. Desert-white walls arched up around them; tile lay underfoot like spilled blood, freely given: heartache that’d been transmuted into passionate words. “We _love_ you. And of _course_ John’s fucking amazing.”

“If you’re leaving we’re coming with you,” John choked out, through shakiness. Holly’s eyelashes were wet and shining, but every thin inch of him remained oddly calm, anchored by sincerity.

Ryan put a hand on the doorknob. Added, “Enjoy the scotch,” and was just unheroic enough to take pleasure in Pete’s flinch.

Holly’s fingertips moved. Aureate gleam tiptoed into existence, wreathing that hand like the anguish of dying stars.

Pete shuffled that moustache. The silence stretched out and grew leaden boots. The scents of meatloaf and potatoes hung anguish in Arizona air.

Sylvia murmured, “Pete…”

John’s father looked at Holly. Then Ryan, and then—longer—at John. Then back at Holly.

And shuffled that moustache again, made a grumbling noise like the chewing of rocks, and muttered, “Son…”

John turned.

Pete cleared his throat. “I mean the kid.”

This time _everyone_ looked at Holiday. Holly, tucked under John’s arm, gazed at Pete.

“You, uh.” Pete cleared his throat a second time. “You got that…that magic power, right? Energy. Movin’ things around. You know how to, uh, rebuild a fence? Down the slope, out in the back? Where that tree came down? Wouldn’t mind some help, tomorrow morning, before everyone shows up. Not as young as I used to be. Could maybe use a hand.”

Ryan’s mouth dropped open. He could feel it. Stunned.

He snuck a peek at John. Same expression there too. Poleaxed. Staggered. All those colorful metaphors about shock.

Holly put the hand in question down. Tiny sparks curled back up into his fingertips, curious, tentative. Their light reflected in his eyes. “I…could do that? I’ve never tried to build a fence. But I think I could.”

“And maybe…” John’s mother wavered, found an idea. “Johnny mentioned one of your charity programs had to do with children and reading? If you’d like to talk to an old librarian…we’ve got a few reading programs too…?”

“Yes,” Holly said. “Yes, I would appreciate that. Any suggestions you might have. I’d love to hear them.”

“We could, uh, open that scotch,” John’s father said. “If you…all three of you…if you have some time, if you don’t have to run off right this minute…saving the world and all…unless you do, that’s fine…”

“I think,” Holly said, not taking the apologetically offered excuse to depart, “we could stay. For—for a while. Couldn’t we?” He had an arm around John’s waist. “If that’s not any trouble, of course.”

“Oh, you _are_ a sweet boy…” Sylvia smoothed hands over her dress, and nodded firmly, having made this new narrative make sense in her head: the last living Sinister Sorcerer was a boy in need of love, a boy who loved her son, a boy who liked books. “Er…you do like pie? Blueberry. Not as fancy as what you’re used to, I’m sure. But we’ve got ice cream, or whipped cream…?”

“I like pie,” Holly agreed. “I’m not certain I’ve ever had properly homemade blueberry pie, in fact.”

Ryan whispered, to John, “What the hell just happened?”

John, saucer-eyed, leaned down to whisper back, “I don’t know!”

“Are we seriously staying for scotch and pie?”

“I seriously don’t know! I think so!”

“Did Holly just guilt-trip your parents into becoming decent human beings?”

“They’re still my parents! They’re not _completely_ indecent! I mean—you know what I mean!” They both threw glances at Holly, on John’s other side and now talking earnestly to Sylvia about a children’s fantasy series involving wizards. His hair rippled under domestic lamplight. John gave up. “It’s those eyes. That heart. Works on everyone. Even them.”

“That’s _unfair_ ,” Ryan said. “I’ve been trying to get your parents to like me for _years_. All he had to do was look at them and be sad.”

He was mostly teasing. He did not want Holly to be sad; he did not want to see that heartbreak in either of his partners. He squeezed John’s hand. “If this works…”

“It’s a start.” John squeezed back.

Holiday turned back to them. Pete had headed off to open scotch and find glasses; Sylvia had started back to the kitchen, and they’d follow, in a second. But this second, here and now in the entryway, under the lights, belonged to them. “Was that all right? You’re not upset with me? For saying all those things?”

“What kind of magic was that, even,” Ryan said, and reached over with his free hand to stroke a bit of Holly’s hair back into place. “Enchantment, suggestion, compulsion, what?” It was a start, yes. Not a guarantee, and there’d be work to do, stumbling-blocks and negotiations and mending of fences literal and metaphorical. It’d take time.

But John’s shoulders looked lighter.

“I didn’t use magic on them,” Holly said. “You know I didn’t. I wouldn’t. John…”

“More than all right,” John said. “That was…thanks, kid. Holiday. Thank you.”

“I love you,” Holly said. “I love you both.”

Yes, Ryan thought, watching him. You do, don’t you. And you meant everything you said. And you knew, because you were trained to know, how they’d react to you saying it.

Holly hadn’t lied. Every word heart-shatteringly honest.

But Holiday Jones had learned manipulation and persuasion and eloquence at the feet of parents and tutors and fellow supervillains. And, like the beauty, like the magic he’d not employed, like the artistic sketchbook talent that could entertain children or reconstruct the plans to a secret vault—

That honest vulnerability and that shattered heart could be a weapon or an instrument of healing. Maybe, maybe, even the kind of instrument that’d deliberately sacrifice itself to drain old poison and then stitch ragged torn edges back together.

John would never think like that. Ryan was just cynical enough to wonder.

He caught Holly’s eye. Holly smiled, very very tiny, just enough; and leaned into John’s stalwart bulk.

“We don’t have to spend the night,” John said. “I think…I think I’d rather not. But we can stay for a while tonight. And come back early tomorrow, before the actual big party.”

“Yes,” Holly said. “I think so too. I think we should be in our own bed, tonight. And tomorrow I’ll learn how to rebuild a fence and meet more of your family and appreciate barbecue. If that’s what we decide.”

They collectively looked at Ryan.

He said, “Sure,” and tugged on a strand of Holly’s hair. “And we’re gonna have a talk about what you think you deserve. Not now, but later. After we’re home.”

“ _Yes_ ,” John said. “And if we have to tie you to the bed and show you what _we_ think you deserve, how much we love you, over and over, then we will.”

“Yes, please,” Holly agreed. “I love you taking care of me. I know you always will. Whatever I need. I trust you to give that to me. Both of you. I’m always yours.”

“You mean that too,” Ryan said to him, knowing they’d both caught the happiness lighting up John’s eyes, that pleasure at the thought of providing exactly what Holly needed; and tugged on his hair a little more. “And you are. And we’re yours. And now I’m kind of wishing we hadn’t just promised to stay and have pie, because I want to see you on your knees and using that mouth the way I tell you to, to make John feel good.”

“Oh my god,” John said, “my parents are _literally in the next room_.”

“I didn’t say we should do that right this _minute_.”

“Later,” Holly said. “After pie.”

“Neither of you’s allowed any puns about blueberries.”

Holly gave him the world’s most tragically disappointed expression, over sparkling desire: layers and layers of love. John asked, arms going around them both, “Can I have at least one joke about whipped cream?”


End file.
